You can bet your sweet nelly that the American Religious Reich is behind this. They are trying to export their brand of homo-hate internationally. They have already been sending huge amounts of money and staff to Canada to try to found and cultivate a fundamentalist “Christian” base there. I hope that they will have to pull back some of their resources to defend their dwindling American base now that their power in the US is faltering.Please, Canadians and British citizens, pay attention to what these people have done in the US. These religiously based bigots are a threat to progressive and modern societies around the world. Don’t let them get a foothold in other countries. They have cause untold damage in America. Thank God Americans are FINALLY catching on to the dangers of giving them power to dictate government and law.Don’t let them do the same to your country.

The advert in the Times may back fire for the religious right showing them up as extremist nut cases to both the government and the majority of British people. It’s interesting to see how quickly the equality minister responded to the “inaccurate and wild speculation” of the religious group (her words).

I think it’s right that a government should step in to help its peoples establish a just and fair society. However, how wise is it for any government to legislate in areas of conscience? How can we get diverse people to live together, love and respect each other without resorting to the cosh of the law? Is my conscience more important than yours? Isn’t it too easy to be ‘for’ a law when it favours my views and ‘against’ it when it doesn’t. Someone last week commented on how much law this government has added to the books. It is frightening to see every corner of our lives now being regulated and legislated for. I don’t want my views protected by the law – I want them understood and respected by others.

Well it’s about time the religious bigots came out of their closets and showed their true intolerant colours.The only way to counter their vile arguments is to declare yourself atheist and proud of it.Religion and equality are mutually incompatible as religion will always have “demons” that threaten their stranglehold on the weak willed and easily led.That religion is based on myth and power freakery is no surprise to level headed people – it’s a shame that there are still so many people that are able to suspend their natural instincts and belief to readily follow their religious leaders into a blinkered devoid life.Life is way too short to go around hating people and forcing myths on society.

But Tim what does conscience mean? Does it mean a homeless project that is run by the church (and usually public money too) can throw someone out because they are gay? Does it mean that hotel can refuse a couple a room because they are gay and the owners have a fundamentalist christian conscience? No room at the inn appears to become relevant again after 2000 years. Should the law allow catholics to refuse goods and servics to protestants or protestants to refuse goods and services to jews because they don’t believe in each others religions? It is a logical extension of using consience as a basis for discrimination.There really is no place for discrimination based upon totally unprovable fundamentalist beliefs that are, to millions of people in Britain, frankly bizarre.

Have to agree with Zeke’s comments. Isn’t it ironic that for centuries religious bigots have railed against gays and subjected us to untold persecution, denial of basic human rights. Now that the UK is gaining on equality issues which makes hate crimes against us along with a myriad of others including the delivery and goods services a crime, they are now getting a taste of their own medicine and what it feels like to be discriminated against. Vengeance is sweet. At long last the chickens are coming home to roost. Elton John was right, religion should be banned, period, it is not compatible with democracy since its clear none of them believe in it. They should all go live in the middle east where they would find common ground, they have no place in the west any longer and can continue to live in the dark ages.

God loves EVERYONE he has made, and that includes me and that includes you. So hating anyone, whatever they call themselves, in not true Christian belief. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less and there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. That is because God IS love.But God doesn’t force his love on us (because that wouldn’t be love) and we can CHOOSE to turn away from it. Turning away from God is what the Bible calls sin, turning towards God is what the Bible calls faith.This is what I choose to believe.

JonathanJust proved the point. You suspend belief in reality to “believe” that there is some god figure that watches over every single person, listening to their prayers and deciding whether they enjoy an eternity in heaven or are condemned to hell when they die.With mixed up thinking like that it’s not really surprising that religion spawns fruit loops, after all the whole basis of religion is myth and superstition with no basis in reality so it can be twisted to whatever ends the “believer” wants.I for one really hope that all “faithful” people wear icons of their belief – be it crucifixes or veils, at least that way sane logically thinking people can avoid them knowing that they won’t have a positive grip on reality and are likely to be narrow minded judgemental freaks.Religion is nothing but a manmade way of controlling the masses with guilt and fear. The sooner we throw off that guilt and fear the sooner we can start living as human beings – with free will and compassion based on empathy (not god’s love) for the human condition.

AndyEVERYONE has faith. We have faith in our friends, faith in other road users, faith in doctors, etc. etc. Faith is trusting something that we then live our life by. An atheist has faith that there is no God. God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy. Everyone pays their money and makes their CHOICE.Christianity is based on HISTORY, not myth. There is more historical evidence that Jesus lived than Julius Caesar did. Some religions might be based on ‘myth and superstition’ but Christianity isn’t one of them.Christianity is not about guilt and fear, but forgiveness and love. “Perfect love drives out fear” and “I have come not to condemn the world but to save it”. Read a gospel and see. God loves you because he made you.

If someone wants to believe in a 2000 year old book, that is indeed their choice and rightly so. However, attempting to IMPOSE those beliefs on other people and discrimate against other people because they do not happen to believe as they do is simply unjust, illogical, unfair, and unacceptable.

Society has to impose SOME beliefs otherwise it falls apart. For example, the belief that you shouldn’t take something that belongs to someone else, or that you shouldn’t have sex with someone unless they agree to it. Anyone who doesn’t like THOSE beliefs being imposed has to go and live in a cave on their own. Or get locked up in a prison! Now that is what I call an imposition of beliefs!So imposing beliefs has to happen in society – that is what LAWS are. The question is: WHICH beliefs should we impose? How do we decide what is necessary, fair, sensible, right, etc.3 suggestions:1. Follow the majority view (which keeps changing, and, besides, what happens to minorities)?2. Do what is logical (but how do you work that out)?3. Follow some higher authority (but how do you decide which one)?Any other ideas?Did you know that most of our laws ARE based on that ‘2000 year old book’ (like to 2 examples I gave above)? (By the way some bits of it are more than 3000 years old).

Just wake up, revenge-atheists: this vile group with their add in the Times is a totally twisted misrepresentation of the love that is essential to Christianity. As a Christian minister, heterosexual and married, for that matter, I too am utterly outraged by what they say. So don’t dismiss my solidarity with crass and ignorant comments against religion in general. When it is good, it is very very good. When it is bad, it is indeed horrid!

I think what I find disapointing is the fact that only 38 people complained? I find nowadays in the gay community on the whole the apathy towards gay rights is widespread. Didnt I read some where that the relgious lobby sent 25,000 emails on protest to the govenment. Here we had a chance to really show our displeasure on this dreadful piece of propganda and only 38 people made the effort. At this rate the relgious people will in the end get thier own way

No display of Love from the christians then, this advert shows them up for their unchristian attitudes toward their own gay christians and all minority groups. The government must stand steadfast against this religious intolerance.

Of course it is not homophobia. A christian guest house would no more not hire a room to unmarried people of the opposite sex either than it would to gay people, so why is nobody mentioning that, but are only singling out Gay people as if it were directed at them? In any case, christians have been discrinminated against in History – Witness the Roman Empire with Christians being fed to the lions for their beliefs. It is not new to Christians to be vilified for the sake of their conscience. Homosexuality was thriving and legal in Rome and Christians were being thrown to the lions because they did not participate in the general lifestyle of the majority, which included their sexual behaviour. John the Baptist was beheaded because he disaproved of Herod sleeping with his brother’s wife. So, what’s new? By all means, practise your orientation, just as straight people can sleep with as many people as they want, but do not force religous people to participate in it, which they would, through certain aspects of this law. There is enough In England room for evry one to live their lives without impsoing it on others. Stop equating disapproval with homophobia. The law cannot impose approval. Live and let live. Do not take us back to Rome.

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